Water bill review and validation

Commercial water bills are complicated. Volumetric charges, fixed charges, surface drainage and trade effluent, all have different tariffs depending on your property.

Are you confident your business is billed correctly for water and sewerage services?

The free AquaSwitch bill validation service offers:

1. Validation of all charges
2. Detection of billing errors
3. Opportunities to save money

What is the AquaSwitch water bill validation service?

Our water experts assess your current and historical water bills to give you comfort that your business is being billed correctly by your business water supplier. We’ll need invoices covering at least the last 12 months for each of your business supply points.

If you have multiple properties, being comfortable that you are on the correct water tariff is even more difficult. Send us your latest bills with each property, and we’ll perform a comprehensive bill validation review for your entire business.

Our process is as follows:

Step 1 – Send us your latest invoices relating to the property you wish us to review, including historical invoices where available.
Step 2 – Our experts will review your invoices, recalculating all charges from the first principles using your wholesaler’s scheme of charges.
Step 3 – We will report back our findings of any discrepancies noted in your billing, any areas where historical rebates can be requested, and other recommendations to save money on your water supply.

What are we looking for in our water bill review?

How water and wastewater services are billed depends on where your business is located and a number of very specific factors to your business.

Confusingly the way these charges are presented in the business water bill depends on your water supplier. Here are a number of areas that our water experts are looking out for in their review:

  • Incorrectly applied tariffs
  • Excessive surface drainage charges that can challenge
  • Excessive use of estimated consumption in your billing
  • Excessive retail charges that can be renegotiated
  • Miscalculation of the Mogden Formula for trade effluent charges
  • Incorrectly applied rateable values
  • Increases in consumption that could indicate a leak

What are the benefits of using our bill validation service?

The AquaSwitch bill validation service is completely free and will provide you with the peace of mind that your business is being billed fairly for its water.

AquaSwitch is experts in bill validation; using our service, you will benefit from:

  • Comprehensive checks verifying each individual charge being levied against your business.
  • Bespoke reporting of any issues specific to your business.
  • Challenging your business water supplier for areas where we believe your business has been overcharged by negotiating rebates on your behalf.
  • Arranging for all issues to be fixed in the central market database so that they will not reoccur.
  • Identification of significant increases in your consumption, helping you identify any leaks and other water inefficiencies.
  • Tailored recommendations for saving money on your water bill.
  • Avoid errors and uncertainties involved with estimated billing by your supplier.
  • Exceptional service working with you, your supplier and your wholesaler to resolve any issues on your behalf.

An important part of this process is to monitor your business water bills on an ongoing basis. Managing your bills over time and keeping on top of them will save you money and enable you to pay accurately for your water usage.

Our experts will analyse your bills and validate them before you are required to make a payment. This way, any outstanding queries can be dealt with before payment. This takes the burden away from you and gives you the comfort that you are paying the correct amount.

The full AquaSwitch water audit

The AquaSwitch bill review and validation service is a high-level review of your business water bills that can identify areas where your charges can be challenged. If AquaSwitch identifies a problem with the way your business is being billed, then our experts can help resolve the issue by conducting a full water audit.

A good example of this is the surface drainage charge, where the charge depends on the area encompassed by your business property. Our water audit professionals can provide a no-win, no-fee site visit that remeasures the area of your property to identify and measure the extent of any overcharging.

We’ve successfully challenged and arranged rebates of hundreds of thousands for our customers.

If the AquaSwitch bill review and validation process identifies an area that could be challenged, we’ll discuss with you the opportunity of conducting a full water audit.

Why do errors occur on business water bills?

It would be nice to assume that your business water supplier is billing you accurately for your water services. Unfortunately, with the British water market, this is often not the case. The non-household water market has only recently been deregulated, and the central data that the industry uses for billing is often inaccurate.

Further complicating the situation is that the eleven regionally wholesalers all use different rules when it comes to determining water and sewage charges as set out in their annual scheme of charges. With the complexity of business water bills, it is inevitable that errors occur.

Business Water

Use the AquaSwitch business water comparison service to compare the latest business water rates and switch to a trusted supplier.